


Avatar of the Desolation

by advanced_fanatic



Series: Bungou Stray Archives [7]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs
Genre: Angst, Dazai Osamu Being An Asshole (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu Needs a Hug (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai-Typical Suicide Mentions (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai-Typical Suicide References (Bungou Stray Dogs), Friendship, Gen, Mori Ougai Being An Asshole (Bungou Stray Dogs), Platonic Relationships, although since this is chuuya's pov he is not as terrible as he might otherwise have been, and he is terrible, because this is chuuya's fic, but friendship nonetheless, finally mori shows up, platonic soukoku, really really fucking weird friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26225686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/advanced_fanatic/pseuds/advanced_fanatic
Summary: Nakahara Chuuya existed before Rome, and yet he's never met anyone quite like Dazai Osamu before.
Relationships: Dazai Osamu & Mori Ougai (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu & Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu & Oda Sakunosuke & Sakaguchi Ango (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu & Oda Sakunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Dazai Osamu & Sakaguchi Ango (Bungou Stray Dogs), Mori Ougai & Nakahara Chuuya (Bungou Stray Dogs)
Series: Bungou Stray Archives [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1740364
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Avatar of the Desolation

His name wasn’t always Nakahara Chuuya. He didn’t change it in the way of the Stranger, bouncing between names and identities like so many colored hairbands; he changed it because he had read the work of a very famous Japanese poet who, like all humans did, died, and therefore wasn’t using the name anymore, and anyway Chuuya had been around for so long that he didn’t  _ actually _ remember where he came from originally, so it could have been Japan.

Anyway, Nero was getting old, and besides, whenever he introduced himself to anyone, they would say, “Oh, like that emperor who played the violin while Rome burned? Your parents must have been history buffs!” and then he would have to resist the urge to whip out his violin and set them on fire.

Because yes, he had been  _ that _ Nero, with the violin and Rome and everything, and--look, he hadn’t even wanted to become an emperor in the first place, he had just been bored out of his goddamn mind and then one day he realized that wow, Rome was, like, actually really flammable, and wouldn’t it be fun if that caught  _ fire _ ?

And then he realized that as a Desolation avatar, he could set anything on fire, whenever he wanted to, and so he got out his violin, which he really did enjoy playing--Kouyou, a Slaughter avatar, had been teaching him--and he lit the city on fire using music. Which, technically, was the Slaughter’s thing, but Chuuya had never really been good at drawing the lines between these things and therefore whenever parts of the other Entities overlapped into him, he didn’t tend to notice or care beyond the increased capacity to fuck people up.

Naturally, this resulted in him being one of the most terrifyingly powerful avatars ever, which annoyed Mori Ougai to no end (once he came into existence, over a millenia after the fall of Rome) as he carefully carved out eyeball after eyeball and watched Nakahara Chuuya use powers from every single Entity in the most chaotic way possible and daydreamed about getting him under his control.

This opportunity came a few centuries after Chuuya had forgotten his original name (he knew he was Herostatus before he was Nero, but he had no idea who he had been before that or even if he had been someone before that) when Mori’s idiotic charge and future body got himself hopelessly lost before attempting to set some guy’s eyebrows on fire, and Chuuya saw this and thought  _ wow, that kid is hopelessly stupid and also someone I should befriend, like, yesterday _ . This threw quite a few wrenches in Mori’s plan to grow himself a new body (especially since his  _ other _ attempt had managed to get herself far, far away from him some years prior), but luckily for him, at first he didn’t notice anything unusual about the angry redheaded boy his future body--his Demon Prodigy--had somehow managed to befriend, other than the fact that he was  _ willingly _ hanging around the boy that Mori was training to be as isolated as possible, and that he seemed slightly more prepared to deal with the boy’s suicidal tendencies than most six-year-olds, which was really unfortunate for Mori, because if the boy was suicidal it would make it that much easier to get into his body once this one wore out, until he made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm one day to ask him a question and ended up in the hospital with third-degree burns.

It was not his finest moment.

Luckily, Chuuya was fascinated enough by the boy that he didn’t mind, and Mori started letting them near each other more often. As soon as the boy knew that Mori approved of Chuuya, he  _ stopped _ wanting to be his friend, but that was fine. The boy was merely a blip, something for Mori to use to get the immortality that came to Chuuya so naturally. The boy was useful in gaining Chuuya’s power--gaining Chuuya as an ally--and so he allowed him his fusses and his tantrums but made sure that he and Nakahara Chuuya spent as much time together as possible.

Nakahara Chuuya  _ hated _ Dazai Osamu. Sure, the kid had a lot of potential as an avatar, but he had quickly realized that the kid hadn’t set the guy’s eyebrows on fire because he liked fire, but because he was an annoying little shit who hadn’t ever been loved and therefore seemed to want to make other people hurt the way he was hurting.

But still. He had the makings of a great avatar of the Desolation.

Dazai, who was as smart as he was annoying, had cottoned on to what Chuuya was doing really fast, and decided to annoy the shit out of him after Chuuya had refused to burn him to death.

(“It’s not fun to burn someone up who  _ wants _ it,” he groused. “Go--be happy, and shit, and  _ then _ I’ll burn you!”

“I’m never going to be happy,” Dazai said. “So like, can you use your fingers as crayons if they get cool enough or no?”)

Dazai had grabbed him and tried to use his hand as a crayon, and had fallen back, screaming, hot wax running down his arm (at least five year olds healed fast?)

Mori, Dazai’s weird and creepy guardian, grabbed Chuuya by the arm and yanked him back, and his scream was  _ amazing _ as he burned.

That was how Chuuya met and aligned himself with the Eye’s main avatar, and even if rumor had it that the only reason he was the main avatar was that he kept killing off the competition, the fact remains that he was  _ able _ to kill off his competition, which made him a very valuable and useful ally to have.

Plus, if Chuuya burned someone and they made it out alive, that basically guaranteed they were friends, and no matter how much Dazai hated Mori, well, Chuuya hated Dazai and it would be nice to befriend the one person he seemed to  _ actually _ fear.

Except that kind of backfired, because Mori and Chuuya’s new alliance caused Dazai’s need to annoy Chuuya to grow into a genuine hatred, and Chuuya found he liked it a lot better when Dazai was just annoying because he wanted attention rather than annoying because he was trying to legitimately kill Chuuya. And he was a  _ lot _ less annoying once he met Oda Sakunosuke and Sakaguchi Ango and Chuuya stopped being the only source of positive attention in his life, because the kid immediately latched onto them as tightly as he could and begged Chuuya to keep it a secret.

Chuuya hated it even more when Dazai begged. Especially now, as he trembled before him, tears flickering in his eyes, looking so,  _ so _ pathetic.

“Please, Chuuya, you can’t tell Mori, you  _ can’t _ , he’ll kill them, Chuuya…”

Two years ago, Dazai had asked Chuuya to use his power as an avatar of the Desolation to destroy him. This was the first time he actually had the opportunity.

“What, you aren’t afraid I’ll set them on fire, shitty mackerel?” he asked, and Dazai looked at him like he was an idiot.

“I would  _ rather _ you burn them alive then Mori  _ ever _ find out about them,” he snarled, the tears still prickling in his eyes, and Chuuya wondered if he was like this, as an seven-year-old. Angry and terrified and half-feral and grasping for love, a concept so foreign to Chuuya that he has taken to destroying it every time he comes across it.

But maybe he could make an exception for Dazai.

Not because he likes him or anything.

No, he’s making this exception because he hates him and thinks it’ll be a better sacrifice to his god if he waits, and lets Dazai have this, when Mori does eventually find out (because the Eye’s main avatar  _ must _ have access to whatever it is he wants to know) it will destroy him all the more.

And Chuuya will still be there. And Chuuya won’t be the one to have sold him out. And Chuuya will be the only person Dazai goes to for those crumbs of positive attention once more.

And if Chuuya pretended to be hanging out with Dazai while he ran around after Sakaguchi and Oda, that was nothing more than letting those hopes build before they were invariably smashed.

“You’re making a  _ fucking what _ ?” said Chuuya in disbelief.

“Library!” Dazai grinned at him. “And  _ you’re _ going to help us start it.”

“I don’t even want to fucking know.”

“You know, slug, that’s a pretty bad word for an eight-year-old,” Dazai said.

“Shut the  _ fuck _ up, I am literally  _ thousands _ of years old, I only look eight because I have to hang around  _ you _ .”

“You don’t  _ have  _ to. In fact, after you help us with the library, you’ll never have to see me again!”

Chuuya rolled his eyes. “I’m not that lucky.”

“Yeah, you are, ‘cause what you gotta do is you’re going to help me run away.”

“And why the everloving fuck would I do that? You know about my alliance with Mori. And once you’re grown up and an avatar in your own right, we’re gonna take the world on storm. Soukoku, remember?”

Dazai scowled. “I’m not going to  _ become _ an avatar, Chuuya.”

“Sure you are, dumbass. You don’t have a choice.”

“Mori is going to scoop my eyes out and steal my body the minute I turn eighteen, Chuuya,” Dazai said, his voice flat. 

“What.”

“That what he  _ does _ , to stay alive. And it’s not that I don’t want to die, ‘cause I do, but Odasaku and Ango really, actually want me, for  _ whatever _ reason, and I want to give them whatever  _ they _ want, because they’re amazing, Chuuya, they really are. And if you wanted me dead you would’ve already burned me, so. The Library.”

Of course Chuuya hadn’t known it was a capital-L Library then, but Dazai clearly had. And Chuuya, despite all evidence to the contrary, did not actually want Dazai dead, and  _ definitely _ didn’t want Mori to steal his body.

“Fuck you,” said Chuuya.

“So you’ll do it, then?” Dazai asked.

“You really love those dumbasses, don’t you.”

Dazai paled. “Don’t say that  _ out loud _ !”

“If I help you, I’m telling them that to their  _ face _ ,” Chuuya said, and melted the lock on Dazai’s window so that he could climb down.

Usually, when Chuuya made people cry, it was after he had reduced their lives to a pile of smoldering ashes. He had not been aware that there was another way for people to cry, but when he stared at Sakaguchi Ango and Oda Sakunosuke and declared that Dazai loved them so much that he had literally decided to throw his life away to follow them, that he wanted to give them everything they ever wanted, and that, despite being suicidal for as long as Chuuya had known him (since he was five) he wanted to live for them, he realized that there were other ways people cried, too, since Oda burst into tears and scooped Dazai up in his arms and whispered over and over that he loved him too, and that he’d never let anything happen to him and he’d never have to go back to Mori, never.

Chuuya was distinctly uncomfortable, because Sakaguchi was thanking him, over and over, and he really didn’t want to burn  _ another _ person, especially not one of Dazai’s favorite people in the world, so he awkwardly excused himself after leaving them with his phone number and left.

Burning down the Library was  _ wonderful _ . Dazai wasn’t there, but Sakaguchi’s shrieks of horror as they razed it to the ground filled Chuuya with power. They met each other’s eyes.

“Why…?” Sakaguchi asked.

“Oh, don’t be so pathetic,” Chuuya said. “I’m  _ Dazai’s _ friend, after all.”

And he saw Sakaguchi’s eyes harden, and the Desolation whispered to him that he had started the long, laborious process of making Sakaguchi hate Dazai.

_ Good. _

And when he and Dazai ran around together as impulsive teenagers, and Dazai mentioned that Sakaguchi hadn’t spoken to him since the fire, bitter heartbreak hiding behind his words, and Chuuya was  _ so _ glad he hadn’t told Mori about them that day. This? This was excellent, and he knew that the shitty mackerel would probably go to Sakaguchi again someday. It wasn’t like he’d  _ actually _ hurt the asshole, and besides, Dazai enjoyed tormenting him too much for Chuuya to  _ really _ feel guilty about it.

Besides, he still had Oda. They were helping him get away with murder.

...Dazai no longer had Oda. He had been arrested for murder.

Dazai was working for the Archivist.

The Archivist told Dazai that Chuuya had convinced Sakaguchi he hated him, and that Sakaguchi’s resentment towards Dazai had dragged him towards the Loney.

Chuuya and Dazai did not speak for three years.

When they were thrown together again, by Mori, they were headed to Sannikov Land, to sacrifice Dazai to the Distortion to stop the Great Twisting. Chuuya knew it. Dazai knew it. The annoying thing was that Dazai refused to  _ acknowledge _ it. Instead, he twisted his words like knives, like corkscrews, like  _ fire _ , until Chuuya was screaming at him in pure rage and had totally forgotten his impending death.

Only once did it come anywhere near sincere.

“We were friends once, you know,” Chuuya snapped, after Dazai had somehow managed to stick an entire live fish into his wax and bits of it (most of it) refused to come out.

“Yeah,” Dazai snarled. “And then you took Ango from me!” He glared at Chuuya, and for a moment he could see the terrified seven-year-old, begging Chuuya not to let Mori know about his new family. Begging him to help him keep them, and believing him when he said he would. “And now I’ll never fucking get to say goodbye.”

“Dazai, I--”

Chuuya was cut off by a live crab shoved into his mouth. It seriously messed up his wax, and by the time he caught up with Dazai again, the boy had already scattered Chuuya’s possessions throughout and over the side of the ship, and he was so angry that he forgot entirely about Dazai’s words until some redheaded twerp that definitely was  _ not _ Dazai hopped out of the Distortion’s hallway.

“Sup, Chuuya,” he said, grinning.

“Who the fuck are you,” Chuuya snapped.

“It’s me, Dazai! I managed to stop the Great Twisting--I  _ told _ you I wouldn’t die.”

“I don’t know  _ who the hell you think you are _ ,” Chuuya snarled, “but you are  _ not _ Dazai.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Chuuya,” Mori said, “that’s obviously Dazai.”

Chuuya stared at Mori like he was insane. “Um, no? What the fuck? It’s not?”

“I  _ am _ ,” said the thing that was not Dazai, sounding hurt.

“You’re not!” Chuuya shouted.

Nobody believed him that that thing wasn’t Dazai. It took every opportunity to torment him, too, and he responded by lighting it on fire--it and that damned yellow door that seemed to pop up whenever it was near him. 

The Distortion’s door.

The Distortion that had killed Dazai and sent out this thing in his place.

Chuuya felt sick, Chuuya felt angry, Chuuya was still finding fish scales in his wax, proof of the  _ real _ Dazai, that shitty motherfucker who wouldn’t even say goodbye to him.

Did he know that this would happen?

Did he care?

Chuuya had destroyed countless lives. He had played the violin and burned Rome, and several other places besides. He had watched families get ripped apart all at his hand--so why was he so upset that one annoying jackass was gone?

Probably, it was because nobody else  _ remembered _ that jackass. Dazai would hate being forgotten more than anything--it was why he made himself so annoying, back when they were on good terms--and the fact that  _ Chuuya _ was the only one who did so, when Chuuya had taken one of the first two people Dazai had ever loved from him, would make the shitty little bastard  _ furious _ .

Upon returning to land, Chuuya found out that the inhabitants of the ship were not the only ones who thought the red-headed imposter was the real Dazai. Kunikida Doppo kissed him when he got off the ship, and he stalked him long enough to see Izumi Kyouka hurl herself into his arms; Fukuzawa Yukichi just shook his head and asked Chuuya if he was feeling alright when he brought it up, which led to a three-hour long dissertation on his exact feelings for the shitty mackerel that he immediately did his best to repress and forget he had ever said.

(Best friend, really? Like a really fucking annoying little brother who you want to throttle? Annoying stupid kid who can’t take care of himself? Give him a  _ break _ . He hated Dazai, pure and simple; there wasn’t anything else to it. It was an awful lie, and he wondered how it had been pulled out of him like that). Oda was even worse, his eyes lighting up at the chance to talk about one of his favorite subjects. Chuuya pitied him so much he felt like he was going to be sick, and left before Oda could get past Dazai’s tenth birthday in his tale of this false life. That was it. That was the last straw. If Dazai could hear this, he’d be sick, and so Chuuya had to avenge him.

He was going to kill the imposter, and restore everyone’s memories of the real Dazai.

He may hate the bastard, but nobody deserved to be forgotten like that.

**Author's Note:**

> Finally, some more information on the Library! I hope you like Chuuya's POV, and I hope you like Soukoku's dynamic here.


End file.
